Pfizer Cancer Drug Falls Short of Expectations

There are many drugmakers that are concentrating on introducing better cancer drugs and Pfizer decided to bring out their new breast cancer drug palbociclib that has done well in the trials. The drugmaker said that the drug has shown lot of promises in the trials, but eventually it fall short of expectations. Soon after the announcement was made, Pfizer shares dropped in the stock market by 2.5% considering the results that were released.
Releasing the drug at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting on Sunday, Pfizer showed the results from its phase two trial of palbo in patients that suffered from metastatic breast cancer. The drug definitely shows lot of promise and many investors were impressed by it, but the question is whether Pfizer can translate this success into overall survival benefit. The presentation of the Paloma-1 trial clearly indicates that the benefits are smaller in 10.2 months compared with 18.6 months interim analysis. The report claims that the overall survival benefit was just 4.2 months and that is not really significant. Some of the experts also revealed that the study also enrolled fewer than 200 patients and therefore it is very difficult to produce a statistically significant overall survival benefit. It is also believed that the FDA would not approve palbo without the interim data from phase 3 trial that has not happened yet.

Pfizer has already made an announcement that they are planning to launch a larger phase 3 trial that will help them to focus on OS benefit. At the moment, Pfizer has licensed palbo from Amgen with 8% royalty on sales.